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CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD v
FOREWORD
This book opens with the second inaugural address and contains the President's messages and addresses since the United States was forced to take up arms against Germany. These pages may be said to picture not only official phases of the great crisis, but also the highest significance of liberty and democracy and the reactions of President and people to the great developments of the times. The second Inaugural Address with its sense of solemn responsibility serves as a prophecy as well as prelude to the declaration of war and the message to the people which followed so soon.
In the case of the former book the evolution of events which led to war was illustrated in messages from January to April 15th. In the preparation of this book, which begins with the second inaugural, it has seemed desirable to present practically all the messages of war-time, and therefore three papers are included which appeared in the former and smaller book, in addition to the twenty-one messages and addresses which have been collected for this volume.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
My Fellow-citizens,--The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the immediate future.
A COSMOPOLITAN EPOCH AT HAND
Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention, matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence.
It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. To be indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the question.
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